Oceanus was the son of Uranus
and Gaea. He was the personification of the ever-flowing stream, which,
according to the primitive notions of the early Greeks, encircled the world,
and from which sprang all the rivers and streams that watered the earth. He was
married to Tethys, one of the Titans, and was the father of a {108} numerous
progeny called the Oceanides, who are said to have been three thousand in
number. He alone, of all the Titans, refrained from taking part against Zeus in
the Titanomachia, and was, on that account, the only one of the primeval divinities
permitted to retain his dominion under the new dynasty.

NEREUS.

Nereus appears to have been the
personification of the sea in its calm and placid moods, and was, after
Poseidon, the most important of the sea-deities. He is represented as a kind
and benevolent old man, possessing the gift of prophecy, and presiding more
particularly over the AEgean Sea, of which he was considered to be the
protecting spirit. There he dwelt with his wife Doris and their fifty blooming
daughters, the Nereides, beneath the waves in a beautiful grotto-palace, and
was ever ready to assist distressed mariners in the hour of danger.